Most pressing entreaties drew our heroine to the harp, before which Ella was seated, having already commenced the exquisite accompaniment which preludes the “willow song” of the gentle Desdemona. Ella was now in her fifteenth year. The warm sun of Italy had almost visibly ripened the child of a year since into premature womanhood. Though of a form so slight as to appear almost ethereal, she was already taller than her mother, and so pure was her girlish beauty, so infantine her air of candid innocence, you might have fancied her the youngest and loveliest of the nymphs of Diana. Her small, Grecian head seemed actually bending under the weight of the rich masses of soft, blond hair, which formed a triple crown above the classic brow, and fastened in a knot behind, fell in a luxuriance of clustering curls to the slender throat. Though like in feature, Ella formed a striking contrast to her mother; and for the first time I confessed that it were difficult to decide which might bear the palm, the dazzling beauty and ever-varying expression of the still young matron, or the timid, retiring loveliness of the girl. The one appeared as a royal rose, in all her splendor; the other, a tender bud, shrinking even from the kiss of the sunbeam—the former, a gorgeous tropical plant, whose rare beauty can only be equalled by its fragrance; the latter, a sweet and modest lily, hiding amid its leaves in the greenest and most sequestered dell, haunted alone by fairy footsteps. Evelyn had never sung so well. The rich tones of her voice vibrated with sentiment, as she portrayed the sorrows of the loving but forsaken wife. The audience forgot to applaud, (the greatest compliment that can be paid to a singer.) The lovely minstrel’s own eyes were humid with emotion. Ella looked a coldness she perhaps did not feel. Mr. D’Arcy advanced to the harp. “Madame,” he said, “compliment to _you_ would be misplaced. The genius of Rossini has found in your own a worthy interpreter. You have sang as he must have desired in his moments of deepest inspiration—when the ideal descending embraced the real. Nay,”—as she prepared to disclaim the praise so delicious to a true artiste, from one whose taste and judgment is felt to be unimpeachable—“nay, fairest songstress,”—and he smiled that smile of rare fascination which thrilled to the very inmost of her being—“if I have praised, it is because I have felt the pathos of those sympathetic tones, the poetry breathing through each phrase of melody, and I,” he added, as if to himself, “so rarely indulge in the luxury of emotion. But pray, Mrs. Travers, present me to the young lady who has so ably seconded you.” “To my daughter? Certainly—she is but a child. Ella, dearest, Mr. D’Arcy would make your acquaintance.”